A book is the only place in which you can examine a fragile thought without breaking it, or explore an explosive idea without fear it will go off in your face. It is one of the few havens remaining where a man's mind can get both provocation and privacy. ~Edward P. Morgan

Freedom™ and Freedom™ – I have read both the audiobook and what they are calling the hardcover book* of Book 2 or the 2nd book in the Daemon books.

Freedom(TM) was amazing, and the culmination of the Daemon story. It was the story of how the people on the Darknet made use of the Daemon technologies to do good, to create cooperative sustainable societies on the ashes of the failed societies before it, and what that meant to, and could mean to, the masses of the world.

And there must be a bad guy right? Or two… It is also about how the powers that be (corporations and paramilitary) infiltrated the Darknet and used it against itself and how no one alive — on either side — saw what was coming…

I will leave it there. This is a must read book after Daemon. Don’t give up after Daemon because it left you hanging, or because Daemon was a slow starter. There is a reason they broke the two books out like they did. This one moves much faster than Daemon did right from the start and never lets up.

Graphic violence is still quite in evidence in this book as it was in Daemon, but from a different angle, so be prepared for that.

As background: Daemon and Freedom(TM) were originally self published as a single book and it did very well among those in the geek community due to it’s awesome technology and understanding of the online virtual worlds, but when the books were commercially published, the book was broken into two books. It has worked out well enough. The second book really does just continue where the first book left off.

The entire story is amazing. Such great imagination based on tech that has been discussed in research papers and what can be done with it all that amazing tech (some good/some bad), but some of which has not seen light of day even if it’s technically possible. Some is possible but still theoretical. Daniel Suarez has taken it to the next level technically, politically and societally.

Here’s my original article of the combination of Daemon and Freedom(TM) on my blog: